On last night's V, we found out how Anna (Morena Baccarin) keeps her alien army in line — she gives them "The Bliss." Which is probably just as dirty as it sounds. All in all, a corking installment. Spoilers below.

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You can sort of tell that the first six episodes of V were compressed into four episodes, judging from how fast-moving this one was. In one hour, we got to see Erica and Father Jack track down Georgie's shambles of a resistance movement, and by the end we saw Georgie, Father Jack, Ryan and Erica all come together to start forming their resistance cell. Meanwhile, the "fake death threat" thing only took up about half the episode, and got nicely wrapped together with Anna's publicity coup in handling the "CIndy Sheehan wannabe" protestor. (See? Anna's not Obama. She's George Bush.)

Possibly the best parts of last night's episode involved Alan Tudyk waking up and remembering bits about his life as a human — including the horror of living among us and being married to a woman who brushes her hair over the kitchen sink. (Although then the surprise reveal that the VIsitor treating Alan was actually part of the Fifth Column was actually a tad disappointing — especially if that really is the end for Alan this time.)

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Oh, and the other best part was seeing Elizabeth Mitchell get to kick more ass and be extra-competent, taking down the shooter (fake though he was) with awesome professionalism, and then sneaking into the Visitors' Big Brother room. If this show proves, once and for all, that Elizabeth Mitchell deserves more roles as a butt-kicking action hero, that will be a great accomplishment by itself.

The worst part, as usual, involved Dylan the little twerp, and his date with the hot blonde visitor — who turns out to be Anna's daugher. And we learn that the Visitors have extra special plans for Dylan — is it too much to hope they'll result in his immediate death? Like, early in next week's episode? The other annoying thing was the show's continued habit of having characters repeat the same word or phrase several times in the episode — in the first episode, it was the word "devotion," spoken at key moments like a flashing billboard saying "THIS IS A THEME OKAY". In the second, it was "resistance." And last night, we got people saying "safety in numbers" a few times.

All in all, it was a pretty solid episode, and I'm intrigued by all the hints that the media-savvy Anna is using more direct means to control her own people. Here's hoping next week's installment delivers as well, since it's the last episode of the year — and let's hope the show's ratings slide doesn't continue.